Emulation or the real thing?

From: Hans Franke <franke_at_sbs.de>
Date: Thu Oct 22 07:34:22 1998

> >So, believe it or not my naive young man, people are dumb enough to lose
> >the source code.

> What I don't believe are these claims that the heart of the Y2K
> problem are thousands of businesses running apps as old as I am,
> that haven't had to change, or that can't be changed. How many
> serious businesses are still running the same unchanged sourceless
> app since 1978, much less 1968 or 1958?

Most of them are not completely unchanged, but the changes
are only in some parts that have been changed every year once
or twice - and large parts haven't changed at all for the last
20 or 30 years.

Also don't forget - for some programm parts there might be
a source, but the object code has been patched (not uncomon)
and the source doesn't reflect the programm. Or source tools
(assemblers etc) where used, wich are not availabe today !
Or the source is stored in a library where no LMS needed is
available - or they are stored on tapes no longer readable
(to bee correct no longer readable means in most cases only
they can't be just inserted and read - you know, some of the
Y2K heros don't spend more than 20 minutes before they decide
'Source gone').

Gruss
H.

--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Thu Oct 22 1998 - 07:34:22 BST

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